Research Assistant
Penn State University•University Park, IL
•Hybrid
About The Position
The Department of Anthropology is seeking a motivated and detail-oriented undergraduate research assistant to support active research projects centered on the human ecology of infectious diseases. The position is flexible and collaborative: specific tasks will be discussed and agreed upon with the student based on their interests, skills, and availability. The student will have opportunities to contribute to multiple complementary work streams, ranging from technical data tasks to substantive quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Requirements
- Enrollment in a relevant undergraduate program (Anthropology, Biology, Public Health, Geography, Statistics, or related field)
- Strong attention to detail and commitment to data quality
- Ability to work independently and communicate proactively
Nice To Haves
- Interest in infectious disease ecology, global health, or human-animal interactions
- Exposure to quantitative methods (statistics, data analysis) or qualitative methods (ethnographic research, content analysis)
- Experience with Excel, R, Python, or GIS tools (not required — willingness to learn is)
Responsibilities
- Annotating drone orthophotos using semantic segmentation tools (CVAT) to classify land cover types (e.g., agricultural fields, settlements, vegetation) that inform models of rodent habitat and human-rodent contact risk
- Reviewing and quality-checking annotation outputs
- Assisting with cleaning, coding, and analysis of rodent ecology datasets (trapping records, species composition, infection status)
- Supporting statistical analyses of human subjects survey data, including household surveys and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data on human-rodent interaction
- Working in R or similar tools to produce summaries, visualizations, and Exploratory analyses
- Assisting with transcription, coding, and thematic analysis of qualitative data including focus group discussions and interviews on local knowledge, land use practices, and human-rodent interactions
- Contributing to synthesis of qualitative and quantitative data streams
- Literature review and background research as needed
- Assisting with data organization, documentation, and research protocols
- Contributing to lab meetings and presenting work-in-progress as experience develops
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Part-time
Career Level
Entry Level
Education Level
No Education Listed
